Silvio Berlusconi on Monday night electrified the final stages of Italy’s general election with a pledge to abolish council tax and appoint women as ministers if returned to office. The prime minister cunningly waited till the closing seconds of his final TV duel with Romano Prodi, leader of the opposition, to make his surprise populist tax pledge.
Longstanding rivalry between Rwanda and Uganda took a new twist on Monday after Ugandan security forces photographed and arrested a Rwandan diplomat naked in bed with the wife of a Ugandan businessman. The incident involves John Ngarambe, the first secretary at Rwanda’s embassy in Kampala, who was detained along with the woman late on Saturday at an upscale hotel near Lake Victoria.
General Motors (GM) and Ford saw sales fall again last month despite some popular new models, while Toyota reported a 7% increase over last March. Automakers reported monthly sales figures on Monday. GM’s sales were down nearly 15% for the year.
In 2005 there were nearly three times as many private security officials as sworn police officials in South Africa, the South African Institute of Race Relations says in its annual South Africa Survey. The number of private security officials increased by 150% since 1997 during a period that saw the number of sworn police officials decrease by 2,2%, the survey, released on Tuesday, showed.
Israeli aircraft on Tuesday fired three missiles into the presidential compound of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, wounding two people and leaving deep craters in the ground. The Israeli air strike came in response to homemade Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel, though it was not immediately clear why Abbas’s compound was targeted.
Chief Justice Pius Langa on Tuesday confirmed that he had received a complaint about Cape Judge President John Hlophe. ”As far as the complaint by Judge [Siraj] Desai, yes, there is a complaint,” he told reporters attending the Judicial Services Commission (JSC) hearings in Cape Town.
Former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who is currently facing charges of crimes against humanity, will face, for the first time, genocide charges over the Anfal campaign against Kurds that left around 180Â 000 people dead, the Iraqi High Tribunal said on Tuesday. Similar charges are also being laid against six co-defendants.
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Old friendships and family ties were laid bare in Jacob Zuma’s Johannesburg High Court rape trial on Tuesday. Zuma chose to sit down for his second day of testimony and seemed relaxed as state prosecutor Charin de Beer examined his relationship with his rape accuser and her father.
An eight-year-old Indonesian girl who died last year has been confirmed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the nation’s 24th bird-flu fatality, a health ministry official said on Tuesday. Runizar Rusin, the head of the ministry’s bird-flu command post, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that samples taken from the girl were only recently sent to Hong Kong for testing.
Kenyan bird experts on Tuesday began probing the cause of fowl deaths in Lake Naivasha in the Rift Valley that have raised fears of a possible avian-flu outbreak, officials said. The veterinary experts arrived in Lake Naivasha, about 90km north-west of Nairobi, to take samples from dead birds that have succumbed to a mysterious disease in the past week.